Ways to increase email size limit in Exchange Server 2013?

Megha Sharma
Updated On - 24 Jan 2019

Managing mail flow in Exchange Server plays a vital role in effective database management. Heavy attachments in emails cause data to pile up and consume extra storage space. However, as a solution to this issue, it is possible to set email size limits within Exchange Server using Exchange Management Shell and Exchange Admin Center. Here, let us understand how we can alter the default mail size limits in Exchange Server 2013.

Use of Exchange Management Shell to change the mail size limit

First, open Exchange Management Shell on your Exchange Server. Check the current server limit on emails by running the following cmdlets.

To check the Transport service emails limits, run this command:

get-transportconfig | ft maxsendsize, maxreceivesize

To check receive/send connector service email limits, run the following command:

get-receiveconnector | ft name, maxmessagesize

NOTE: Use “send” in place of “receive” in cmdlet to check send connector service emails limit

Now to change the emails size received by the Transport service, execute the following cmdlet:

Set-TransportConfig -MaxSendSize 15MB -MaxReceiveSize 15MB

NOTE: You can either increase or decrease message size limit using the above cmdlet.

Also, you can set limits for the results of the get-transportconfig cmdlets as:

With these methods, you can manage Exchange data growth up to some extent. However, if you face issues like Exchange database corruption, you should try some tools that can recover data from EDB files.

Kernel for Exchange Recovery, an automated tool for Exchange recovery and migration, works for recovering inaccessible EDB data to Outlook PST, Office 365 and more destinations.

Summing up

Exchange Server gets affected by the huge size of emails. We can solve this issue by changing the maximum limit of email sizes at different ends of mail flows. However, if you are facing issues due to the corruption of Exchange database files, you should recover data from the corrupt EDB files using an Exchange recovery tool like Kernel for Exchange Server. It repairs data efficiently and migrates it precisely to different destinations.